


Untitled werewolf fic

by AirgiodSLV



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-02
Updated: 2011-04-02
Packaged: 2017-10-19 01:30:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/195384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AirgiodSLV/pseuds/AirgiodSLV
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Trust Arthur to know how to handle lycanthropes, just like he knows how to handle bloody everything else.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled werewolf fic

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://cherrybina.livejournal.com/211815.html?thread=14767463#t14767463) at the kink fest.

Eames takes a third job with Cobb in spite of – or possibly because of – Arthur’s continued presence on his team. Arthur grates on Eames’ nerves, but he also gets under Eames’ skin, which is a puzzle Eames hasn’t fully untangled yet. There’s nothing Eames enjoys better than figuring out someone he doesn’t completely understand.

This particular job is longer than he’d prefer, straddling the full moon and ensuring that he’ll have to take at least two days off before and after the change. Thankfully the lead-up to the moon is during the initial prep week of intel-gathering and discussion, which means he won’t miss anything terribly critical that he can’t catch up on later. The last few waxing days are the worst.

It’s unlikely that he’ll be able to hide what he is from the team. Eames gets more aggressive during the last few days before the moon, establishing dominance over anyone else who threatens his status and distracted by his own shifting senses. He’s already discreetly warned Cobb, because Cobb has a tendency to throw his weight around in a way that Eames as an alpha can only tolerate in human form, and even then his patience is limited.

The others shouldn’t be a problem. Tuponile has nothing to prove, content with his beakers and syringes, and Arthur trots after Cobb like a dog himself. An architect-point man partnership is not the strangest thing Eames has ever encountered, but it’s among the ranks. It also puts Eames as the extractor further outside the loop than he’d prefer, considering that it’s so often his neck on the line.

He’s twitchy, the day before the moon, but it’s nothing he can’t handle. He doodles flowcharts to help his brain organize the job more effectively, picks through the details of Cobb’s latest model for the cemetery they’ll be dreaming in, and helps Tuponile out a few times by holding and measuring various mysterious liquids.

He doesn’t volunteer to go under as a test subject. It’s not wise, with his body chemistry already starting to change. That honor goes to Arthur, who is longsuffering as usual but infinitely easier to get along with while asleep. Eames wishes Tuponile had more to test, this early on; with Cobb still designing, there’s not much reason for any of them to be dreaming. Eames has already clashed with Arthur twice today over office supplies and once over who was allowed to sit in the revolving chair with the armrests.

Eames is not at his best, this time of the month.

Sometime in the middle of the afternoon, when Eames has reorganized Arthur’s filing system, commandeered all of his red pens and the full set of whiteboard markers, rewritten his notes on the mark’s schedule, and taken over the contested chair, he realizes that he’s reacting to Arthur as an alpha. The most he’s done to Cobb is given him a dark look when Cobb drank the last of the coffee and put the pot back empty, and Eames might have done that no matter what day it was. Arthur does it twice a week without there being any biological imperative in play besides caffeine addiction.

He keeps a closer eye on Arthur after that, both Arthur’s behavior and his own responses. Arthur gives him a few skeptical looks after Eames sidles by his work area the first few times, but they have their rules in place, neatly ironed out after the screaming row they’d gotten into on their last job together, so once it becomes clear that Eames is going to keep walking behind him for no apparent reason, Arthur ignores him.

Eames is surprised by how vehemently he dislikes that.

He supposes it makes sense. Arthur is currently a member of his pack, and members of his pack should be paying attention, watching him for orders. They shouldn’t be writing blithely on whiteboards with markers that Eames took away from them once already, pretending they don’t know Eames is right behind them, smelling like expensive aftershave and spices from a take-out lunch.

“Eames,” Arthur says without turning around, “stop breathing down my neck.”

“Just keeping abreast of things,” Eames says, but he’s not, really. He’s inhaling more deeply, trying to sort out the smell of Arthur beneath the soap and hair product and shoe leather, the musk camouflaged beneath a not-unpleasant array of masking scents.

“What do you want?” Arthur asks, one clearly articulated word at a time, and Eames opens his eyes to find Arthur right there in front of him, staring him down.

Eames’ first instinct is aggression, but he clamps down on that, assisted by the fact that Cobb is giving him a funny look from the other side of the room, probably wondering whether Eames is going to sprout claws and try to tear Arthur limb from limb.

Not that he’d be able to, in all honesty. Eames is fast, but Arthur carries two guns and has a knife within fingers’ reach. It would be a close race to see who could disable their target first.

That thought shouldn’t be nearly as exciting as it is.

“Coffee,” he answers belatedly, and goes off to poke around in the makeshift kitchen before he does anything especially damning, such as closing his teeth around Arthur’s wrist to keep him from acting out and challenging Eames’ authority.

He’s attracted, he realizes. That’s what he’s been missing, hidden among the verbal fencing and grudging respect for each other’s professional competence. Sexual attraction. Eames doesn’t swing that way often, and he’d dismissed Arthur out of hand during their first job together as being too prim, too tight-laced, too cold to be of interest. Apparently his hormones have chosen to disagree.

He circles the warehouse twice after emerging from the kitchen, checking on his territory and sniffing around his pack. He ends up lurking behind Arthur’s desk somehow, examining the tidy right-angles of pencil cup, notebook, and paper clip box. When Arthur returns from the whiteboard he has to squeeze past Eames to get to his chair, slipping sideways into the narrow gap between Eames and the desk.

Eames shifts forward without thinking about it, trapping Arthur against the desk. Arthur smells…he smells…

Arthur starts to twist away, and Eames blocks him automatically, hands on Arthur’s hips holding him steady. He can smell Arthur beneath the aftershave and pomade now, elusive but present. Arthur’s entire body tenses, and Eames licks his front teeth, ready for a fight, ready to test the strength of his jaw against the corded muscles in Arthur’s neck, to drag him down to the ground, to grapple with him until Arthur realizes he’s beaten and goes limp, submissive, acknowledging Eames’ dominance.

He sticks his nose beneath Arthur’s jaw, sniffing out fresh skin and a vulnerable pulse point. Arthur jerks backward, trying to get away, and Eames is so close to smelling him, so close, so he pushes closer, hips pinning Arthur to the heavy wooden desk, grip tightening on the sharp angles of Arthur’s hipbones. Arthur’s muscles coil in a way that means he’s about to fight or try to escape, but Eames is almost there, and he whines high in his throat.

Arthur freezes. Then he slowly, and very obviously, relaxes.

Eames takes it for the permission it is and continues his exploration, nosing at the hinge of Arthur’s jaw and the soft curls hiding behind his ear. Arthur’s hands lower to his sides, away from weapons and the threat of violence, and he tilts his head back the barest amount, just enough for Eames to register his exposed throat.

Eames comes back to himself a moment later, humiliatingly aware that he’s assaulting a colleague in a shared workspace, and that Cobb and Tuponile are probably openly staring.

Arthur, on the other hand, hasn’t moved. Arthur is calm, non-confrontational, and displaying every sign of acceptance of Eames’ dominance. Trust Arthur to know how to handle lycanthropes, just like he knows how to handle bloody everything else.

Eames pulls back, ignoring Cobb and Tuponile in his peripheral vision and focusing on Arthur, who’s watching him steadily. He clears his throat. “You’ve encountered this before, I take it,” he says instead of apologizing, because he can’t change what he is and he won’t apologize for it. The idea of Arthur learning appropriate waxing moon behavior from someone else almost has him growling, which is a ridiculous response and one he keeps sharply in check.

“I read,” Arthur replies, still searching Eames’ face. Eames becomes suddenly aware that his hands are still on Arthur’s hips, now resting lightly over the curves of bone. “You should have told me,” Arthur continues, straightening up just enough that Eames is forced to take a step back and release him in order to maintain a reasonable amount of personal space between them. “I would have been more considerate.”

“Yes, well, then I wouldn’t have confiscated half the contents of your desk,” Eames replies inanely. He doesn’t even know exactly what he’s saying, but it makes Arthur smile, just the slightest curl at the corners of his mouth. Eames takes another step back, rubbing his hand over his mouth. “I think I’ll take a walk.”

“Take all the time you need,” Arthur offers, and it’s not until Eames is outside with the fresh air clearing his head that he realizes Arthur just gave him _permission_ , like he’s Eames’ leader rather than the other way around.

“Bugger,” Eames says to himself, and extends his walk to a second loop of the waterfront.

When he returns to the warehouse, things are better. He keeps catching Tuponile staring at him like he’s grown a second head, but Cobb has taken Eames’ momentary lapse of control as a signal to keep everyone busy and distracted so that Eames can have some breathing space.

The sole problem with this arrangement is that Cobb has redirected all of the bossing around he’d usually be doing into being passive-aggressive at Arthur, and apparently this is not something Eames can tolerate either.

He ignores it for the most part, like an itch right between his shoulder blades that he can’t get at to scratch, up until Arthur makes a suggestion about underground passages between the mausoleums and Cobb shoots him down so dismissively that Arthur’s spine goes taut and stiff.

Eames growls.

Tuponile is so startled that he drops a beaker, which bounces and clatters against the cement floor. Cobb looks surprised, then chagrined, and backs off with his hands up, visibly biting back whatever he’d been about to say. Arthur…

Arthur looks intrigued.

Eames is not especially comfortable with that look on Arthur’s face the day before the moon.

He doesn’t figure out what it means until late in the evening, until he’s feeling restless and snappish and so irritable he can barely stand _himself_ , and it takes him too long to understand why, because Arthur is doing everything right. Arthur is moving in arcs, the crisp clean lines of him cutting wide circles around claimed territory. He’s keeping his eyes lowered, not maintaining eye contact in any way that could be considered challenging. He’s even managed to stay in direct line of sight for most of the evening, not straying anywhere he can’t be seen.

And he’s doing all of those things for _Cobb_.

Eames still can’t quite believe that he’s not imagining it, that it’s not another distortion all in his head brought on by body chemistry and hormones, until he catches the tail end of a conversation about the mark’s family.

“If you think it will ameliorate…” Arthur concedes.

“I do. Good, that’s taken care of,” Cobb decides, and Eames is already on the verge of another verbal warning when he sees Arthur bend his head, so slightly that it can hardly be noticed, and show Cobb the back of his neck. As he does, his eyes cut sideways, locking on Eames’.

Arthur is _baiting_ him.

Awareness strikes so hard that for a moment Eames can’t breathe. He stands without consciously choosing to do so, and within a handful of seconds he’s across the warehouse with one hand clamped around Arthur’s wrist, dragging him into the half-renovated area in the back where they’ve set up lounge chairs in a semi-circle around the PASIV. Arthur goes without a fuss, meek and compliant. Of course he does, he’s been playing – _playing_ – subservient for the past three hours or more. Eames should have known better than to trust Arthur playing nice.

He pushes Arthur up against the closest wall, holding him there with a hand flat against his chest, but he doesn’t even have the chance to get a word out before his nostrils flare and he stops moving. Arthur had smelled good before, tantalizing in his subtlety, but now he’s…

Aroused. It’s unmistakable, this close. Arthur smells of musk and desire, intoxicating even without the added stimulation of the attraction being mutual. Eames wants to bury his nose against Arthur’s skin and lick his pulse point to feel it jump beneath his tongue.

“You’re getting off on this,” Eames rumbles, sliding his hand up Arthur’s chest until the soft web of skin between his forefinger and thumb is pressed against the bulge of Arthur’s Adam’s apple. “Do you like the idea of playing this game with something even more dangerous than you are?”

Arthur stretches out his neck beneath Eames’ hand, just enough that Eames squeezes a little to make sure Arthur knows he means it. “You’re courting me,” Arthur says, swallowing against the additional pressure. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” When Eames just stares at him, he adds, “I told you. I read.”

Eames’ eyes tighten. “And what would you do if you had me, hmm?” he asks, and gets his answer in Arthur’s eyes, in the sudden spike of his scent. “Do not,” Eames bites out clearly, and then he can’t finish, because he’s too busy breathing in the dizzying combination of sweat and musk in the hollow of Arthur’s throat, nuzzling into the open V of Arthur’s shirt collar.

He’s close to biting, riding that thrilling edge of violence and sex with his hand still on Arthur’s throat and his weight pressing Arthur to the wall, when Arthur does the right thing again, baring his neck and going lax in Eames’ hold.

“What do you need?” Arthur asks him, low-voiced, and there are a thousand answers Eames could give to that question, most of them involving blood.

Eames gives in and moves closer, crowding Arthur against the wall and leaning heavily against him to feel the way it forces Arthur’s breath shallow and faster. He buries his face in Arthur’s neck and closes his eyes, breathing.

“Just this,” he says, and after a moment Arthur’s hands come around him to tentatively settle on his shoulders, encircling him.

Cobb breaks them up a minute later, no doubt checking to see whether or not Eames has torn Arthur’s throat out, but by then Eames has gotten hold of himself and is calm again. Arthur is on good behavior as well, keeping to himself for the remainder of their work hours, occasionally passing by or letting Eames circle his desk so that Eames can get a reassuring whiff of his scent.

He’s not actually courting Arthur. That’s ridiculous. For one thing, Arthur isn’t a female werewolf, which means the standard rules of courtship don’t apply; and for another, Arthur isn’t an alpha. Alphas don’t mate with subordinates outside of unusual circumstances, such as changing pack dynamics or more hostile habitats.

Except that Eames has never seen Arthur as a true subordinate, and Arthur has been quietly transforming the dynamics of Cobb’s teams ever since he first hit the world of criminal extraction.

Except that when Eames comes up behind Arthur at the whiteboard, he can’t resist pressing against Arthur and touching his lips to the nape of Arthur’s neck, feeling the exact moment Arthur overcomes his own instinctive reaction to defend himself against a threat and relaxes slowly into Eames’ embrace.

Tuponile has given up entirely on pretending to work at this point. Eames doesn’t know what he thinks is going on, but decides he doesn’t give a fuck. Cobb is wise enough to let them handle themselves and keep to his corner behind a fortress of corkboard and drafting parchment.

Eames doesn’t say anything to Arthur about coming to his hotel room after they call it quits for the night. He doesn’t have to, because Arthur answers the door on the first knock without any sign of surprise and moves back to let him in.

“Did you know werewolves can smell when their partners are sexually receptive?” Eames asks, as casually as he can with Arthur standing already stripped down to an undershirt and trousers, his feet bare and suspenders hanging loose at his sides.

“Skip the speech,” Arthur says, and pushes him back against the door to kiss him.

Eames has been on edge for most of the day; having so much of Arthur’s bare skin under his hands is almost maddening. He licks Arthur’s mouth frantically, tugging at clothing until he can slide his hands down the back of Arthur’s trousers to cup his arse and pull him tighter against the cradle of Eames’ pelvis.

Arthur’s breath hitches, uneven, and Eames whines again, licking Arthur’s neck before returning to reclaim his mouth. Arthur rubs up against him, and lets out a noisy breath when Eames reverses their positions and shoves Arthur against the unyielding door, grinding against him deliberately.

“Will you change tonight?” Arthur asks, tipping his head back to expose the long column of his throat.

“Not enough to matter,” Eames manages, and then they’re devouring each other again, with sloppy, open-mouthed kisses and fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.

“What do you need?” Arthur asks again, shakier this time than before, and Eames is almost too far gone to tell him, lost in sensation and stimulation. He squeezes Arthur’s arse, kneading at the muscle, lifting and pulling Arthur’s cheeks apart, his fingers creeping further into the cleft.

“Okay,” Arthur says, trying to pull back a little and failing because Eames won’t give him even an inch of space. “Okay, just let me…”

Eames growls when Arthur tries to pull away again, but Arthur somehow manages to combine soothing petting with slippery determination to get free, and goes for the lube in the bedside table. Eames catches him as soon as he has it, pinning Arthur against the side of the bed and forcing him to bend until his face is pressed against the coverlet, rubbing up and down the cleft of his arse through his finely-tailored trousers.

“Clothes,” Arthur gasps, struggling for breath between the position Eames has him bent into and the way he’s half-smothered by the coverlet. Eames doesn’t like to let him go, but the prospect of nakedness is appealing enough that he stops crowding Arthur and gives them both room to strip.

Eames works fast, losing all of his clothes before Arthur has time to do more than shed his trousers and pants. Eames covers him again, sliding the thin material of Arthur’s undershirt up and kissing the bumps of his spine as they’re revealed. Arthur adjusts his stance, turning his face to one side and reaching back behind himself with lube-slick fingers.

He doesn’t waste any time, but Eames is impatient, whining desperately and digging his cock against the soft skin between Arthur’s buttocks, nudging at the pucker where Arthur’s fingers are pushing steadily in and out, twisting to loosen himself up.

“Stop, Eames,” Arthur says, fighting Eames for space to work and catching his breath when Eames pushes more forcefully against the slick, yielding skin surrounding his fingers. Eames humps him harder, sliding grease-slick up and down the crease just above Arthur’s fingers, and then Arthur is pulling his fingers out and Eames is taking their place almost before Arthur’s, “Okay, okay, go.”

He’s not gentle; any thought for patience and consideration has become subsumed by the urge to mate, to mark his territory, to claim Arthur as his and _take_. He fucks Arthur fast and hard, in all the way to the hilt and only sliding out an inch before pushing back in again harder, again and again, in a rapid, frantic rhythm. Arthur has ceased any attempt to hold himself together and is panting against the coverlet, the sounds muffled but not nearly enough to keep Eames from hearing him.

“Oh fuck fucking Jesus Christ Eames,” Arthur rambles, braced against the mattress with his arse in the air, and Eames takes a deep breath and relaxes, sinking in until his balls are nestled against Arthur’s and going still.

Arthur twitches, caught off guard and uncertain. His arse flexes once around Eames’ cock, pulling at him to move again, but when Eames doesn’t resume thrusting he goes still as well, breathing hard and waiting.

Eames is in as deep as he can go, but in this position he can’t see Arthur’s face, or the flush spread across his chest, or his blood-swollen cock lying hard against his stomach. He pulls out and pushes Arthur down onto the bed, rolling him over and lifting Arthur’s leg so that he can push in again, stopping when he’s as far in as he can get.

Arthur bends his knee to bring Eames in even closer, flexing his calf in Eames’ grip. He looks glazed-over, confused but still aroused, muscles twitching restlessly with the desire to keep fucking. “What…?” he begins, but that’s as far as he gets before Eames starts to swell.

Arthur’s eyes widen, and Eames would wonder if he’d ever heard about this happening with werewolves right before the full moon before, if he could focus on anything besides the tight constriction of Arthur’s arse.

With a female werewolf, this would be the point at which she’d meet him halfway, contracting to hold him in and tying them together. Arthur’s body doesn’t know how to do that, and he’s trying to force himself not to resist. Eames can see the struggle to just take it showing in the sudden tension in his muscles, everywhere else but where he’s locked around Eames.

Eames expands slowly, blood filling his cock, and Arthur turns his head to the side and closes his eyes, panting as he’s stretched wider. Eames nuzzles his shoulder, his collarbone, licking at the line of bone pressing rigid against the taut skin containing it, reassuring.

“Eames,” Arthur pleads, breathing gone more ragged now, the corners of his eyes tight with pain.

Eames licks at his skin again soothingly, tasting the fresh sweat that’s broken out across Arthur’s narrow chest. The pit of his knee is damp where it’s folded over Eames’ hand.

“Oh, fuck,” Arthur whispers, one of his hands relocating to Eames’ side, long fingers digging in hard. “Fuck fuck fuck.”

Arthur’s body finally reaches the limit of what it can take and clamps down hard, fighting the intrusion. It’s enough for Eames to stop swelling, his cock firmly seated and stopping up Arthur’s arse. He can smell the spike of adrenaline and panic when Arthur tries to get away and fails, the girth of Eames’ cock locking them together.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Arthur says, and then Eames stops his mouth, too, licking his way inside and coaxing Arthur into deeper, calming kisses while his body steadily pumps Arthur full of his semen.

“It’s all right,” Eames murmurs, speech restored now that some of the mating haze has cleared, his tongue still thick and awkward in his mouth. “Just relax.”

Arthur turns his head away to get another full breath, and Eames nuzzles at his cheek, the lobe of his ear. “How long?” he asks after another breath, this one slightly more steady.

It could be anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour, an answer that Eames suspects will send Arthur into an adrenaline-fueled panic again, so Eames distracts him with kisses instead, teasing Arthur’s mouth with his tongue and letting go of Arthur’s knee to trail his fingers over the peaked nubs of Arthur’s nipples. He kisses Arthur until they’re both relaxed again, or at least as relaxed as Arthur is going to get, and gradually the combination of Arthur’s muscles unclenching and Eames slowly deflating allows them to slip free of each other.

Arthur lets out a shuddering breath and Eames slides down, holding Arthur open again for inspection. Arthur is gaping slightly, puckered skin red and swollen. Eames licks at it, careful not to dip too far inside and clean away any of his seed, tasting Arthur’s hot skin and the sweat collecting behind his balls.

Arthur groans, spreading his legs wider even though he’s clearly fighting himself to do so, letting Eames lap at him and rub gentle fingers around the reddened skin. His cock is regaining interest, pushing up hopefully when Eames wraps his hand around it to stroke slowly up and down the shaft.

Arthur exhales when Eames shifts between his legs and takes the head of Arthur’s cock into his mouth, licking and suckling at it while his hand works steadily over the shaft. Arthur’s body is reluctant to respond at first, but Eames is patient, lavishing attention beneath the head and tonguing the slit until Arthur’s hips are flexing up into Eames’ grip on his cock, thrusting at an increasingly frantic pace until he finally spills over Eames’ hand and his own stomach.

Arthur appears fairly well fucked-out, so Eames makes himself comfortable on the bed and pulls Arthur against him, settling Arthur’s head on his chest where he can hear Eames’ heartbeat. They lie quietly together while their pulses settle, until the sweat has cooled enough to raise gooseflesh on bare skin.

Eames is prone to a certain amount of self-loathing after occasions such as this one, when he’s obviously been sought out and used for what he is rather than who, and the loose weight of Arthur in his arms becomes a pit in his stomach not long after the first post-coital chill sets in.

“So now you know what it’s like to fuck a werewolf,” Eames says, only a trace of the bitterness he feels creeping into his voice. “Was it everything you were hoping for?”

Arthur doesn’t answer for a long time. Finally he twists slowly, carefully onto his stomach, resting his pointed chin on Eames’ breastbone.

“Call me after the job,” he says. “If you want to.”

‘After the job’ will fall right in the middle of the lunar cycle, somewhere between waning and new. Eames shakes his head and starts to speak, but Arthur stops him with light dry fingers resting against his lips.

“After the job,” he says again.

Eames studies him, considering the faint smile lurking around the edges of Arthur’s mouth, and decides this moment might be worth a gamble.

When he leans down, Arthur meets him halfway for a kiss.


End file.
